TIME
Time (1) – hours and half past
Time (2) – quarter past and to
Time (3) – minutes past and to
Time (4) – mixed
Telling the time worksheet
Where and when.
Using aller plus time.
Time matching task

TOWN
Battleships game for places in town (can be adapted for other grammar or vocab areas)
In town – directions
In town – code breaking
In town – crossword
In town – crossword with definitions
In town – wordsearch
In town – dominoes
In town – vocab matching
Pour aller…..
Transport
Shops (oral/written drill)

HOME
La maison de la famille Leblanc
House for sale advert
Trotro joue à cache-cache – video listening
In the house
In the house crossword
In the house (2)
Rooms in the house
Ma chambre
Dans ma chambre – wordsearch
Ma chambre – video listening sing-along

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I've been dipping into The Routledge Handbook of Instructed Second Language Acquisition (2017) edited by Loewen and Sato. This blog is a succinct summary of Chapter 16 by Beatriz González-Fernández and Norbert Schmitt on the topic of teaching vocabulary. I hope you find it useful.

1. Background

The authors begin by outlining the clear importance of vocabulary knowledge in language acquisition, stating that it's a key predictor of overall language proficiency (e.g. Alderson, 2007). Students often say that their lack of vocabulary is the main reason for their difficulty understanding and using the language (e.g. Nation, 2012). Historically vocabulary has been neglected when compared to grammar, notably in the grammar-translation and audio-lingual traditions as well as communicative language teaching.

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I love this site. It's fresh, youthful and full of really interesting material. They have an archive of videos, both short and long, from various sources, grouped under a range of themes: insolite
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while adding to their broader education. Here is one I enjoyed (I shall seriously think about buying tomatoes in winter now):

This site has been around for years and is the work of a university team in Marseilles. You get a mixture of audio and video material complete with transcripts and explanations.This is much more about the personal lives of the students …

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I did my first degree in French and Linguistics at Reading University and my MA in second language acquisition at the Institute of Education, London. I taught at Tiffin School, Hampton School, then was Head of Modern Languages at Ripon Grammar School in Yorkshire for 24 years. I now write resources for frenchteacher.net, train PGCE students at Buckingham University, present at occasional events, blog and work for the AQA exam board training and writing teacher support resources.

Publications

The Language Teacher Toolkit (2016), a handbook for teachers, co-authored with Gianfranco Conti